The Undertakers Ghost
by icklepriest
Summary: What started as an innocent story to scar his cousins suddenly gets all too real for Tom...
1. Chapter 1

**The Undertaker's Ghost**

"It was a bitterly cold winters evening on the 17th January 1903, the lane was dark and the moon cast eerie shadows over the rough, unmade track. Slowly along this track came a horse and cart. At first glance it didn't look particularly special, just a normal carthorse pulling a normal cart. However if you looked closely you would notice that the man sat in the cart was not a man to be run into on a dark night. He wore a long black coat, black trousers, black shoes, and a very tall black hat. His hair was long and black and although his eyes were set deep into his face, casting them in shadow, they had a strange glow about them. He was, all in all, a very strange gentleman.

The wind whistled through the trees, across the fields and the down the narrow lane, sending the dead leaves scurrying helter-skelter before it, and almost blowing the gentleman's hat off. He muttered something about the English weather under his breath, gripped both his hat, and the horse's reins more tightly with his gnarled fingers and continued on his way. After travelling a couple more miles along the lane our strange traveller came to a cross roads, there he turned left and continued slowly making his way to where ever it was he was going. As he did so the moon peaked out from behind a dark cloud; and you could just make out the letters on the signpost – TUMBLEDOWN HOUSE 1 1/2 MILES.

Now before I continue, I must I suppose, tell you something about this house. It used to be called Thistledown House and was a great house with vast estates stretching for miles, one might even have called it one of the great houses of England but it had come into disrepair. It was due to its state of disrepair that the local farmers had renamed in Tumbledown House. Its previous owners, Mr and Mrs Mortimer, a rich, well to do, couple, had moved away to the city, Mrs Mortimer yearned for the hustle and bustle of city life and so they had left the old gardener to look after the entire estate. For a time the gardener received money from Mr and Mrs Mortimer and so was able to keep the house and grounds in order, and pay people to repair it when occasion demanded. However after a while, the money stopped coming and the gardener grew older and couldn't do as much as he used to. So, having decided that Mr and Mrs Mortimer weren't going to return, he sold the house to a couple who would pay for the ruin that it was becoming, and left. The couple that bought Tumbledown House weren't a particularly rich couple and so after settling in they sold off most of the estate to local farmers and with the money they received, started, very slowly, to restore the house to some of its former glory. However their money soon dried up also and they were forced to stop renovating the house and instead live off handouts given to them by the people of the village whilst the house started to deteriorate once again.

It is here that our strange traveller once again enters the story. By this time he had almost completed his journey to Tumbledown House and had just pulled up at the huge iron gates in front of the house. He rang the bell and, after a few minutes, a light slowly appeared bobbing around the far corner of the house, throwing shadows which danced among the overgrown flower beds sending rabbits scurrying for cover from its pale glow and eventually came to rest on our traveller. A few words were exchanged between our traveller and the carrier of the light from which we discover that the traveller has a name – Mr Chambers, as does the man carrying the light – Mr Gaskins (one of the couple who bought Tumbledown House). Pleasantries having been exchanged, along with comments about the terrible English weather, the two men went to the back of the cart and unloaded something, no, two somethings which were very big and bulky and covered with large, dirty, sheets. Slowly they carried these things back to the house, and after going through the warm kitchen along the hall and up the wide, ornately carved staircase, they eventually entered a cold back bedroom. It was just like any other bedroom in the house, one wall was covered with a huge old wooden wardrobe, which was engraved with many strange patterns, and standing against the other was a very plain chair and a dressing table. The only thing missing from this room was a bed. Into this room the two men entered and put down the heavy things that they were carrying. Then, with a flourish, Mr Chambers removed the dirty sheets to reveal two old but sturdy beds.

'Will these do sir?' He asked.

'They're wonderful' Mr Gaskins answered. 'How much do I owe you for them?' he continued, reaching his coat pocket from which he pulled a rather thin wallet; for although Mr and Mrs Gaskins were poor they were proud people and liked to pay for things when they were able.

Mr Chambers looked up and then slowly replied, 'Don't worry about any money sir, I got them for nothing when an old couple of friends entered my business if you know what I mean, so I wouldn't dream of charging you anything.'

Mr Gaskins gasped and then said quietly, 'Entered your business?' and the after a pause, 'You mean died?'

'Yes, that's right sir. Died, right here on these beds!'

Mr Gaskins looked as if he were about to refuse the beds and make Mr Chambers take them all the way back to the village again, but then, remembering that he had looked for beds for this room for months without success, he decided to accept these beds gratefully if not slightly apprehensively. He did so and then quickly showed Mr Chambers the door. Shutting him out in the cold winters night. And, as Mr Chambers slowly made his way back through the bleak English countryside to the village, Mr Gaskins went back upstairs to inspect the beds. The strange thing was though that although Mr Chambers set out to return home, he never actually made it back to the village. Never again did anyone see the undertaker! Now normally I would take time to describe the beds but as you are sat on them…"

The two girls in front of him gasped! Tom laughed and looked at the girl's terrified faces as they quickly jumped off the big iron framed beds and stood huddled together in the corner of the shed. Tom was about 15 and the two girls in front of him – his cousins – about 9 and 10. They were all sat in the old shed at the bottom of Tom's garden and he had begun to tell them a ghost story to try and scare them, it was working!


	2. Chapter 2

That morning they had been playing in the forest behind Tumbledown House where Tom lived and all the while the sky had been getting darker and darker when suddenly there a crash of thunder and a bolt of lightning hit a tree just a few meters away from them. The tree split in half and then it started to rain, and boy did it rain. There were no leaves on the trees to protect the children from the downpour so the rain lashed straight down from the leaden grey sky soaking them in seconds. Tom and his cousins Becky and Jessica ran trough the dripping trees trying to get to the shed before they got even wetter, but as hard as they ran the harder it was to get there. The brambles kept catching hold of them and tugging at their clothes, the wet branches and twigs of the trees tore at their skin causing blood to mix with the rain on their faces and run in bright red rivulets down their cheeks, and the thunder and lightening were directly overhead drowning out the girls screams. Tom laughed at them, he never got scared, he was a man. Eventually they burst through the door of the old shed and collapsed, wet and exhausted, onto the beds in the corner. They sat there quietly for a few minutes, catching their breath and listened to the storm gather ferocity as it battered the already bleak landscape. January was such a terrible time of year, Tom thought to himself.

It was then, after noticing the beds in the shed that Tom remembered the ghost story he'd learnt word for word from his mum. He'd been looking for a suitable time and place to scare the girls with it since they'd come to stay and what better time than this, with the girls actually sat on the beds and the storm raging outside? So he had asked the girls if they'd like to hear a true ghost story. The girls had looked at each other and although they were already quite afraid of the storm outside had decided that it was a good idea. But now as he looked at their terrified faces looking first at him and then at the beds they had been sat on moments before, Tom was beginning to think that this wasn't such a good idea after all. The wind howled around the shed, causing the windows to rattle and the roof to creak. The girls looked even more frightened and clung to each other even more tightly.

"Do you want me to carry on, or shall I stop?" Tom asked, half hoping that they would ask him to stop because he didn't want to get into trouble with his mum for making the girls frightened when they had come to stay with them whilst their mum went into hospital but half hoping that they would ask him to finish as he hadn't got to the good part yet! The girls looked at each other, looked at the bed, looked out of the window, looked at each other again and then looked at Tom.

"Carry on." Becky said very slowly, and very quietly.

The girls sat down, this time not on the beds but on the cold, hard floor huddled together in the opposite corner.

"Now where did I get to?" Tom continued. "Oh yes, I remember. About 15 years after the beds had been delivered on that strange January evening, Mr and Mrs Gaskins had two children, twin girls. These girls grew up and eventually, when they were almost 10 years old and too big to share the box room they had been sleeping in, they both moved into the room that I described earlier and slept in the beds, those beds that Mr Chambers, the undertaker had given their dad, all those years ago. It was in fact, the first time that anyone had slept in those beds since the old couple had died in them 25 years before, as the cold back bedroom that they were put in was only a spare room which was never used. The two girls carried on growing up like any normal children, going to school, playing games in the forest, and all the other things that 10 year old children do. Well one day, not long after Christmas all that changed. It was in fact the 17th January, the same day that the beds were delivered 25 years earlier. It seemed just like any other day, they got up, went to school, came home, did their chores and then had dinner; in fact there was nothing to mark that day out as special. That was until they went to bed."

The lightening cracked again outside the shed lighting up the dark sky and casting strange shadows on the walls above the beds making the girls jump, Tom looked up and saw their faces turn slightly paler.


	3. Chapter 3

"They had been asleep about 2 hours when suddenly one of the girls woke up with a start. She was just about to close her eyes and go back to sleep when suddenly something made her look around the room again. This time she saw something to make her blood run cold. There, at the foot of the bed stood a man. She tried to scream but nothing came out of her mouth, she tried to shake her sister, but she couldn't move; the only thing she could do was watch this man. He was a very tall man and he wore a long black coat, black trousers, black shoes, and a very tall black hat. To her he looked just like the undertaker out of Oliver Twist. His hair was long and black and there was something about his eyes – they seemed to glow. Again she tried to move; and again she found that she couldn't. As she watched, the man slowly lent over her sister and looked at her, it wasn't a kind look; it was a long hard stare. Then, all at once, he walked, or rather seemed to drift away from the bed toward the wardrobe with the strange carvings. And as she continued to watch him he slowly turned, stared at her sister again and then floated through the wardrobe. All at once she screamed, her sister sat up and screamed too and, after a second or two, there was the sound of running feet along the corridor and into their room burst Mr and Mrs Gaskins. After trying, unsuccessfully to calm the girls down they eventually found out what the matter was. Susan told her parents what she had seen at the end of the bed and what the man had done; all the while her sister was going whiter and whiter. When she had finally finished her story and Mr Gaskins had checked the wardrobe to make sure the strange man wasn't inside, Susan's sister suddenly blurted out, I had a dream and I dreamt the same thing! A man came and peered at me with a cold hard stare and then floated through the wardrobe"

Becky and Jessica screamed!

"At this everyone in the room looked shocked and turned very pale." Tom continued, without pausing for breath. "Mr Gaskins asked again what the man looked like and as Susan and her sister described the man in as much detail as they could remember Mr Gaskins turned almost grey. He started walking around the room muttering to himself, and every now and again he would glance in the direction of the wardrobe as if he was afraid that the man would come back out any moment. Mrs Gaskin and the girls all started talking at once, asking him what the was matter, what they were going to do about the man and where they were going to sleep, but Mr Gaskins seemed not to hear them, he only carried on muttering to himself under his breath, something about beds and dark nights and undertakers and not being seen again."

Tom looked up and saw his two young cousins literally shaking, the wind was still howling outside, causing the branches of the nearest trees to pound against the side of the shed as if someone outside was trying to break in, the rain was still lashing down and the thunder and lightening, although not directly overhead now, was still very loud and very bright. He decided that he'd scared the girls enough so he just said.

"The only thing left to say is that the two girls in the story were your mum and my mum!"

By now the girls were so frightened that they couldn't look at him. Very slowly they moved, they stood up, and, edging round the walls of the shed, keeping as far away from the bed as they could, walked toward the door of the shed, clutching each other, to afraid to let go.

"Where are you going? You'll get soaked." Tom asked.

They didn't answer they just slowly opened the door and then ran through the windswept garden, along the rickety path towards Tumbledown House. The house seemed further away now and the path more uneven than it had that morning when they had left the house to play in the forest. The wind was so strong that if they slowed down to catch their breath it blew them back up the path away from the safety of Tumbledown House. It whipped around their faces reopening the cuts they had got escaping from the forest and making their eyes water, blurring their vision and making it even harder for them to see where they were going. As the tears trickled down their lacerated faces and penetrated the cuts it felt as if their faces were on fire. Eventually after what seemed like hours struggling towards the house the girls crashed thorough the kitchen door and stood in the kitchen, cold, bloody, dripping wet, crying and terrified.

Tom's mum looked up from her cooking and exclaimed!

"What's happened to you? You look terrible! Are you alright? What's Tom been doing to you? I told him to look after you!" As she said this she got up and hurried the girls out of their wet clothes and into warm towels and stood them by the fire, wiping the blood off their faces. "It's ok, your safe now dears. Tell me what happened." She said in a comforting, coaxing voice.


	4. Chapter 4

David Priest Final Piece of Creative Writing December 2005

Slowly, between sobs, they told her the story that Tom had told them in the shed and then, when they had finished they asked her if it was true.

"Yes" She said after a long pause, "It's perfectly true."

She looked at them and realised that she hadn't helped to ease their fear she added.

"But don't worry dears, after that terrible night Mr Gaskins, your Granddad, put the beds out into the shed and got some new ones – the ones you're sleeping in now. Never again did anyone see the ghost of Mr Chambers."

She said this in a way, almost as if she were trying to convince herself of the fact and as she said it she looked around, as if she was afraid that she would see something, or someone who she didn't want to see but whom she knew would be there, watching and waiting as it had so many times in the past.

"You two girls have been sleeping in that room all the time that you've been here and you've never seen him have you?" She asked, almost as if she expected them to say they had seen something.

The girls looked at each other and after feeling a bit shocked they agreed that they hadn't seen the ghost. Tom's mum looked relieved. Just then Tom burst in! He was very wet but he also looked very pale and afraid.

"Mum!" He said, trying to catch his breath and hold his voice steady. "I've seen him, the ghost of the undertaker! He's there! In the shed! Just as you described him!"

"Now Tom, that's enough!" His mum said sternly, and then quickly glanced out of the window into the gathering darkness slightly uneasily. "Don't you think you've scared the girls enough for one day?"

"It's true mum, he was exactly like you told me he looks like - He was wearing a long black coat, black trousers, black shoes, and a very tall black hat." Tom paused as he noticed his mum turn slightly pale.

"Yes, go on." she said.

"His hair was long and black and his eyes kind of glowed." Tom continued. "And there was something else…"

"Yes? What? His mum interrupted quickly.

"Above his right eye there was a 'v-shaped' scar." finished Tom, looking up at his mum.

At this Tom's mum went very pale and she let out a slight cry.

"Are you sure about the scar Tom?" she asked quietly.

"Yes" replied Tom, becoming even more afraid now that he could see his mum was afraid of something. "Mum." Tom's voice started to waver. He tried to hold it steady. "You never told me he had a scar."

"I've never told anyone he had a scar!" said his mum quietly. "When my sister described him and didn't say anything about the scar I thought I'd imagined it and so I didn't say anything about it either. I didn't even tell my mum and dad!" Her voice faded to a whisper.

Tom stopped and looked at her. What had started out as a piece of fun to scare the girls had turned into a nightmare. In the forest Tom had told himself that he never got scared but now it was different – his mum was terrified, she had gone grey and was shaking and talking to herself quietly. His cousins were huddled together quietly crying, and somewhere, out there in the inky blackness, was the ghost.

"Mum! What are we going to do?" Tom asked, surprised at how calm his voice sounded. Inside he didn't feel calm, he felt like all the bits of spaghetti he'd had for dinner the day before had turned into snakes and were writhing around in his stomach but ever since his dad had died he had learned not to show all of his feelings.

"Run!" his mum answered. "Run to the car all of you and don't look back! Don't stop to get anything, just run!"

They looked at each other for a second and then they ran, through the hall and out of the big doors at the front of the house. Down the steps of the house they ran, into the driving rain. The towels around the girls fell but they didn't stop to pick them up, they didn't care, they just ran. On and on, into the battering wind they ran, into the scything rain, never stopping until they reached the car that was parked by the big iron gates. As they pulled away from that terrible house not knowing where they were going only that they had to get away Tom looked back. There, coming round the far corner of the house, was a pale light, dancing among the overgrown flowerbeds. He opened his mouth to scream but checked himself, he was the man of the house now, he had to be strong for Becky and Jessica and now he had to be strong for his mum as well. He turned back to his mum and said quietly,

"Mum, as we were going through the hall I looked at the calendar."

"Yes Tom, I know. So did I." his mum murmured in reply, "It's the 17th today!"

3


End file.
